


Jupiter

by FleetingWonderland



Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: 2008!verse because I can, F/M, this is brought to you by Sweden's non-existent drinking age
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-25
Updated: 2014-05-25
Packaged: 2018-01-26 12:41:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1688732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FleetingWonderland/pseuds/FleetingWonderland
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Charlie isn't the jealous type, no matter what Tessa and Scott or Ashley or the rest of them say.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Jupiter

**Author's Note:**

> I don't even know what this is.
> 
> Real people. Not real events.

Charlie White has never been jealous.

Charlie just isn't the jealous type. He has a beautiful girlfriend, the best dog in the world, and the greatest teammates anyone could ask for. He's in the semifinals for Dancing With The Stars and he has an Olympic medal of every color and his hair has it's own Twitter account. He's going to buy a house and finish his degree and maybe compete another couple of years, maybe the next quad if Meryl's up to it. He's happy.

Charlie has never been jealous of anyone Meryl's dated. He wasn't jealous of that Ethan she dated when she was a Groves sophomore who kept trying to put his hands up her shirt at the football game against Troy Athens she dragged him to. He wasn't jealous of that hockey player Malcolm she met during her freshman year at UofM - the one she met at a fraternity party and slept with that night and then broke her heart a couple of weeks later to hook up with an Alpha Gamma and Charlie had brought her ice cream and let her sorority sisters console her.

He was always fairly calm most of the time in regards to everyone else's personal life. He didn't care that Tanith had dated Fedor or Evan, and Tanith was his _actual_ girlfriend and Meryl was just his skating partner. Therefore he's never jealous of the guys in Meryl's life because he knows he really has no claim to her friendship off the ice. Not to mention that they usually all come and go pretty fluidly, because few of them want to work around her schedule and even fewer are comfortable with her relationship with Charlie.

He's been around for years and he's staying there, and she knows it because she always prioritizes him and skating over her love life.

He's just lucky Tanith understands and he doesn't have to choose (because deep in his heart, he'd always pick Meryl).

Charlie is _especially_ not jealous of one Maks Chmerkovskiy, because Dancing With The Stars was a ten-week engagement and then it was back to Michigan and a Hawaiian vacation and maybe talking with Marina about going for another season. Except when he watches them goof around, so fluid and comfortable, he feels a sharp prick in his side he's only felt once before. And when Maks presses kisses to her forehead, when he sees their silhouette in an elevator where Maks presses her against the wall and she laughs when the door shuts, he gets flashbacks to the only real time he's felt... Envious.

 

* * *

 

He wasn't jealous about the whole Luca thing a few years back, no matter _what_ Scott and Tessa and Ashley had to say about it.

He remembers standing there, scrolling aimlessly though his phone at the Trophee Eric Bompard banquet back in 2007. Meryl and Luca Lanotte had been conversing rapidly in Italian, him none the wiser to anything going on. Until Luca's partner Anna, back from a bathroom trip, sat back down and swatted at Luca before digging into her salad and lecturing him on how he was being inappropriate - thankfully in English. Meryl and Luca both blushed deeply, even though he saw them leaning against a wall a little _too_ close later, his hand stroking her face while they waited for the elevator. When they entered he saw Meryl lean up against him, laughing and smiling and speaking rapidly in Italian. The doors shut and he lost his breath for a second, until Ryan Bradley came up behind him, muttering about some joke Nathalie had told him.

He hadn't seen her for the rest of the night, which was unusual. Meryl would usually come over and hang out with him and his roommate, or drag him to her room and watch foreign television and try to interpret what they were saying based on their expressions. It was their thing and the night felt empty without their last-night game.

Instead, he hung out with Ryan in their room and watched stupid French sitcoms that he couldn't understand but Ryan could actually translate - which took out all the fun of it. They drank too much wine and stayed up until 3am and Ryan told him about how he thought Tessa and Scott were bound to get together any day and Charlie agreed.

When he cornered Anna the next morning, asking what their conversation during the salad course had been, she said they were saying 'impure things' while blushing profusely. Whatever that meant. She looked embarrassed to even have told him that much so he didn't press her, and she scurried away, meeting with Valentina at a couch where he had pulled her away mid-conversation. Valentina glances over at him and looks as if to go into a deep monologue - probably about impolite American boys who look like surfers and can't drink until they're 21.

He only feels bad when he hears from Valentina in the lobby about how Tomas Verner had asked to spend the night in her and Anna's room because the one he often shared with Luca was quote - 'getting a workout' - quote. He can't help but feel slightly hurt that everyone on the Italian and French teams knew that Meryl and Luca had gotten together before he did. He wasn't jealous. Just a little... Thrown off.

 

* * *

 

He _wasn't_ jealous of Luca. He wasn't jealous of Luca Lanotte, no matter what he hears from Ben and Brent at Worlds a few months later, who obviously enjoy getting a rise out of him. He isn't jealous when they bring up how Meryl and Luca have been together almost 24/7 whenever they aren't competing, because they haven't seen each other since the TEB, and he certainly isn't jealous when Luca and Meryl leave the banquet together at the end of the night.

Carolina and Valentina and Frederica's whispering and glancing doesn't bother him. Nathalie and Fabian's consoling - alternating between comforting words in English and hectic French that he can't catch - isn't needed. He doesn't need Johnny to give him dumb advice about how "She doesn't know what she's missing, Curly!" ("Don't call me Curly, Johnny," he scoffs in response). Jeremy and Ashley doesn't need to give him reassuring pats on the back and offer to watch the last few Harry Potter movies in sympathy for him. (The main reason he doesn't want to watch it because he's scared he'll see himself as Ron and Luca as Krum and Meryl as Hermione, which was ridiculous because Ron was _jealous_ and Charlie was _not jealous_ ).

And he certainly doesn't need Scott to tell him to 'chill out' because Scott doesn't know what this feels like, watching your partner walk away with someone else for the night.

 _(A few years later, he'll apologize when he sees Tessa and David Pelletier kissing in the hotel hallway. Because Scott has it_ infinitely _worse that time.)_

But he and Scott have a small party in Scott's room with Tessa and Kimmie and Ashley and Johnny and Brooke and Tanith and Ben and Jeremy where they drink a little too much wine ("There's no drinking limit in Sweden, let's have some actual fun for once!" Scott had declared loudly and Brooke had lifted her glass in a cheer as Tessa looked on, amused.)

But among the stupid movies that Jeremy had brought in his carry-on and Tanith's drunken declarations that Team Canton was the ice dance place to beat for the next quad no matter what the judges said about that French team that had won, Meryl and Luca are still lingering in the back of his mind.

He was having fun, he really was. Letting loose with most of the rest of Team USA and Team Canada was really fun, but Meryl's not there and it just feels incomplete because now Tanith has Ben and Tessa has Scott and Johnny and Brooke have known each other forever and Kimmie and Ashley and Jeremy are pretty good friends too, but he's without a partner for the night. It's odd and he finds a creeping anger that even Tessa was here for Scott but Meryl wasn't for him.

But he's not jealous. He's just lonely this time. And that _isn't_ the same thing.

 

* * *

 

The flight back was too quiet and he was a little too hungover even though his mom didn't notice and Meryl was concerned. But she looked happy and stress-free for the first time in the whole season, and he couldn't be mad at her because they were going back to Michigan and going on a trip to Mackinac Island and he already promised to binge on some fudge with her and bike around the island and an argument would put a damper on things.

They bought mineral water in the airport and he puts on the Beatles and she listens to Fall Out Boy a little too loudly on their respective iPods as their moms sit across the aisle. The air is too thick and he doesn't think it's from atmospheric pressure. He closes his eyes and tries to fight the insane jet lag but he can't and he feels Meryl somehow fall asleep on his shoulder with the chorus of 'Sugar We're Going Down' blaring loudly enough for him to hear.

He smooths down her hair and tries to sleep as well, eventually drifting off. His last thought before he succumbs to exhaustion?

It's a smug thought, far out of his usual wheelhouse.

_Would Luca would be jealous now?_

**Author's Note:**

> This was supposed to be a prompt inspired by Mr. Brightside by the Killers, but it kind of warped and now this is a thing. Inspired by Drops of Jupiter by Train and The Wire by HAIM, aka two songs that shouldn't mutually inspire me but do.
> 
> Maybe a series? Maybe not. I'll decide later.
> 
> Again - Real people. Not real events.
> 
> (find me @nathaliepechalats on tumblr!)


End file.
